Chapter 2

While the light of the Gospel was darkened by the Mahometanconquests in some parts of the world where it had once shonebrightly, it was spreading widely among the nations which had gotpossession of western Europe.

In England, successors of St. Augustine converted a large part of the Anglo-Saxons by their preaching, and much was also done bymissionaries from the island of Iona, on the west of Scotland.There, as we have seen (p139), an Irish abbot, named Columba, hadsettled with some companions about the year 565, and from Iona theirteaching had been carried all over the northern part of Britain.These missionaries from Iona to England found a home in the islandof Lindisfarne, on the Northumbrian coast, which was given up tothem by Oswald, king of Northumbria, and from them got the name ofHoly Island. Oswald himself had been converted while an exile inScotland; and, as he had learnt the language of the country there,he often helped the missionaries in their labours by interpretingwhat they said into the language of his own subjects who listened tothem. The Scottish missionaries carried their labours even as farsouth as the river Thames; and their modest and humble ways gainedthe respect and love of the people so much that, as we are told bythe Venerable Bede, wherever one of them appeared, he was joyfullyreceived as the servant of God. Even those who met them on the roadused eagerly to ask their blessing, and, whenever one of them cameto any village, the inhabitants flocked to hear from him the messageof the Gospel.

But these Scottish missionaries differed in some respects from theclergy who were connected with St. Augustine; and after a time agreat meeting was held at Whitby, in Yorkshire, to settle thequestions between them and the Roman Church. We must not supposethat these differences were of any real importance; for they wereonly about such small matters as the reckoning of the day on whichEaster should he kept, and the way in which the hair of the clergyshould be clipped or shaven. But, although these were mere trifles,the two parties were each so set on their own ways that no agreementcould be come to; and the end was, that the Scottish missionaries went back to their own country, and did no more work for spreadingthe Gospel in England, although after a while the Scottish clergy,and those of Ireland too, were persuaded to shave their hair and toreckon their Easter in the same way as the other clergy of the West.

In those dark times some of the most learned and famous men wereEnglish monks. Among them I shall mention only Bede, who is commonlycalled the Venerable, and to whose care we owe almost all ourknowledge of the early history of the Church in this land. Bede wasborn about the year 673, near Jarrow, in Northumberland, and at theage of seven he entered the monastery of Jarrow, where the rest ofhis life was spent. He tells us of himself that he made it hispleasure every day "either to learn or to teach or to writesomething;" and, after having written many precious books during hisquiet life in his cell at Jarrow, he died on the eve ofAscension-day in the year 734, just as he had finished a translationof St. John's Gospel.